Aloha,
My name is Joel Simmons and I've been looking for a koryu style to study for a while. I just discovered this forum and thought maybe this might be a good way to ask around.
I know a lot of people involved in koryu do not like to take just anybody into their dojo without knowing something about them or without knowing them personally. So, I wanted to just tell a little about myself and my experience in the martial arts so I don't come off as a complete stranger.
I'm a student at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa, majoring in Human Geography. I plan on moving back to Portland, OR where I grew up after I graduate to pursue a masters degree. I am also engaged to a wonderful woman I met at the Univ. of Portland when I attended there. She is originally from Hawai'i. Some hobbies of mine are restoring classic aircooled volkswagens and maybe customizing them a bit. My current project is a clean 1967 Beetle. I also try to go hiking whenever I can.
My martial arts experience started out awesome, but turned sour through time. I began in Portland by studying traditional Okinawan Shorin-ryu karate-do. I loved it. But, the sensei was interested in "expanding" the dojo and getting more and more students so it could be his fulltime job. So, I left the dojo due to it expanding to over 100 students with one sensei. My second experience was with bujinkan ninjutsu. It was interesting, but many of the characters that were attracted to that dojo were practicing for less than noble reasons. At least, thats the vibe I got. Also, ninjutsu has a questionable lineage, and lineage is something I think is very important. The next experience I had was with a Kung-fu kwoon that supposedly taught, "all the Shaolin animal styles and the secret wu-tang mountain styles" well...too good to be true usually is and it was. Here in Hawai'i I tried out another kung-fu kwoon but didn't like the fact that the sifu had framed pictures of himself on the cover of Black Belt mag. all over the kwoon. So, I proceeded to try out some Hawaiian Lua. Interesting, but a lot of hot-heads and egos.
Either I have extremely bad karma or I'm just too picky. All this has occured in the passing of 3 years during which I've just been trying to find a dojo that teaches traditional koryu with the correct spirit.
If anybody could help me out that would be awesome. Thanks for reading this long and boring message, I wish I could've made it more interesting.
Aloha and mahalo,
Joel Simmons